


Make It a Double

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bartender AU, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 19:52:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8340517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: Wherein Daisy is a bartender, Robbie drinks terrible beer, and she's not having anymore of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fitzsimmonsy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitzsimmonsy/gifts).



_He's_ sitting down at the end of the bar again. Daisy shoots him a dirty look but he doesn't even bother looking up from his beer. His cheap, terrible beer. His cheap, terrible beer that he insists on ordering every single time despite her attempts to get him to drink something halfway decent. 

Because the thing is, she's a good bartender. And she has her pride (and an article from the New York Times declaring her drinks the best in Portland hanging right above the bar). And she absolutely refuses to let anyone at her bar drink PBR. 

“Hey,” she says, sliding down the long oak length of the bar once all her regulars are happily settled in with their elaborate gin cocktails and blood orange margaritas.

“Hey.” He only glances up from his beer for a minute before he goes back to whatever he's reading. Seriously, who reads in a bar? Daisy tries to catch a glimpse of his book but he's got the cover pressed firmly down against the counter and he shows absolutely no signs of being interested in talking to her. Maybe that's why she keeps on trying to get him interested.

It's not that he's her type, whatever Bobbi, Jemma, and Elena claim. She outgrew her bad boy with a leather jacket phase a long time ago. (A whole eight months ago.) It's only that all her other customers love her. They insist that no one can make drinks like she can, they tell her all about their days, they leave her hefty tips—not that he doesn't tip the right amount but that's not the point—and they always gush about her to her boss. Sometimes, Phil and Melinda, the older couple who come in for a drink and dinner every Thursday night, even bring her donuts. Melinda claims that it's all Phil's idea but she knows that she only ever told Melinda how much she liked the cinnamon and vanilla sugar donuts they have at Blue Star. Mack, another one of her regulars, fixes her crappy van whenever it breaks down and he claims that it's because she introduced him to his girlfriend Elena and not because she makes the best bourbon cocktails he's ever had. (It's mostly Elena, but a little bit of the bourbon too.)

But all this guy ever gives her is a quiet thank-you and a quieter smile. And, quiet as he seems, she knows that there's something more brewing beneath his surface and she wants to know what those intense eyes would feel like if he really fixed them on her. So she tosses her hair over one shoulder, props her elbows up on the bar, and leans forward just enough to be right in his line of vision. Her pride as a bartender depends on it. 

“Can I get you anything else?” she offers. “We're famous for our cocktails.”

“Not really my thing,” he says easily and shrugs. “Or at least, I've never found one that was my thing.”

“I bet I can figure it out,” she says before she can think better of it. “Let me make you something. On the house.”

Finally, unbearably slowly, he nods. She makes him something simple to begin with, a basic gin fizz. He takes a sip and sets it down almost immediately. 

“So no gin?” she asks and tilts her head to one side, considering. “How do you feel about rum?”

He doesn't like rum either. Or tequila or vodka or bourbon or Scotch or prosecco or any of the dozen other things she stirs and shakes and mixes together over the course of the next few hours. “Are you trying to get me drunk?” he finally says, his voice a little thicker than it was at the beginning at the morning. Otherwise, he's sitting up straight on his stool, one hand still marking his place in his book, and Daisy can't decide whether to be impressed or worried. The only other person she's ever seen drink this much and not be staggeringly drunk is her friend Fitz. (And Fitz is Scottish, which explains quite a lot.)

“No. If I was trying to get you drunk, I'd have gone straight for the bourbon. I'm trying to back up my credentials here,” she tells him lightly. “I can't stand to see anyone in my bar drinking beer that shitty.”

“So why do you even have it?” He takes another sip of the worst beer to ever darken the doors of the bar and actually grins at her. It's nothing like the half-curve of his mouth that he gives her when he leaves most nights, the shape that she wants to tease and tug and curve into something fuller. This is his real smile, brilliant and wide, and Daisy has the feeling that not many people get to see it. 

“My boss insists on it. Says that it brings in the hipsters.” Sadly, it does. Another of her customers calls her away and by the time she looks back at his end of the bar, he's gone. He's left her a good tip though and a note scrawled on one of the bar napkins. _Better luck tomorrow._

The next evening, he's sitting down at the end of the bar again, the same book in one hand and the same terrible beer in the other. “So what are you reading?” Daisy asks when she finally slides down to him.

“Harry Potter,” he admits and stares at her like he's daring her to say anything about it. “I never read them when I was a kid and my brother wouldn't stop bugging me about it so I finally caved and bought used copies of the first three at Powell's.”

“So what house are you?” she asks promptly. He just gives her another look. “Come on, you have to have taken some kind of Sorting Hat quiz. Everyone does it. I'm a cross between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff.”

“No, I really haven't. I swear!” he protests when she narrows her eyes at him.

“Come on. Get out your phone,” she orders. “We're sorting you right now. And then I'm getting you something to drink that doesn't taste like it was made from the tears of broke college students.”

He's a Gryffindor. She isn't surprised.

“I'm Robbie,” he says at the end of the night, after she's tested out four new drinks on him and he's rejected all of them, and sticks out his hand across the bar.

“Daisy.” She has a perfectly normal reaction to their hands touching.

He's back the next night and the next and he talks to her every time, even when she runs out of drinks on the menu to try out on him. Then she goes to the secret menu that she only makes for her favorite customers, and then to the new drinks she's been experimenting with for winter. She counts it as a triumph when he pronounces her mulled wine “not bad”.

“So why come to a bar if you don't even like drinking?” she asks him one night when she's still basking in the glow of the mulled wine success. 

“Maybe I'm just looking for a place to read.” He tilts his latest book towards her, another one of his brother's recommendations. Robbie doesn't talk about his brother much, guarding each and every detail with a fierce protectiveness that reminds her of a little of herself as a teenager, but his face lights up whenever he does. Gabe was hurt a few years ago and now he's in a wheelchair—some kind of accident back in LA—but he seems just as insistent on taking care of Robbie as Robbie is of him, judging from the stories Robbie tells about Gabe trying to make dinner and staying up whenever Robbie stays out late. She listens intently to each and every one and tries to swallow down the wave of longing that rises up inside her every time Robbie mentions her brother. Daisy would have loved a sibling. She didn't care whether they were older or younger, a brother or a sister—she had just wanted them to be there. 

“In a noisy bar surrounded by people trying to hit on each other?” she teases. 

“Maybe I just like the bartender.”

She tries very hard to ignore the rush of heat that floods down her spine.

A week and a half later, he comes straight over to her the moment that he gets into the bar and thumps his heavy paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows down on the polished oak. “She can't just kill off Fred!” Robbie says.

“I know! I cried for days,” she tells him. “And then I was in denial forever, then I cried some more, and now I'm just in a permanent state of denial about it. Fred is totally alive and happily running the joke shop with George.”

“So tell me, did you go to all those book release parties as a kid? Are there pictures of you in costume?”

“No, actually,” she admits, one hand curled tight around the edge of the counter. “I, uh—I grew up in a group home. Midnight book releases weren't exactly a high priority.”

Books weren't a high priority. She only was able to talk one of the sisters into taking her to the library after she promised to work on the home's ancient computer system.

“Shit. I'm sorry—I shouldn't have asked,” he blurts out.

“It's fine. In the past now.” It isn't fine, not really. She actually tracked down her parents a few years ago and they...well, her dad's had his medical license suspended for malpractice and her mom's busy running some kind of yoga retreat in a remote forest in Washington State that seems a little too similar to a cult. Not exactly what she's always dreamed of. 

“Still, if you ever want to talk about it. Or, I don't know, go to a midnight book release party to make up for all the ones you missed as a kid...I'm available. No costumes, though,” he warns her. “Pretty sure I'd just look ridiculous in robes. Like I should have flames bursting out of my head or something.”

“We'll see about that.”

 

“You like him,” Bobbi says bluntly. She, Daisy, and Jemma are roaming the food carts for lunch and it's a testament to just how much of a badass Bobbi is that she can give Daisy the patented stare of truth while eating an incredibly messy taco.

“No, I don't,” Daisy mumbles around a mouthful of fries. “I shouldn't like him.”

“Why not? He sounds great,” Jemma says. She's become a hopeless romantic ever since she started dating Fitz. Daisy half expects her to start singing with tiny bluebirds twittering around her head and talking to small animals any day now. “Just your type.”

“And remember what always happens with my type? I have terrible taste in men,” she points out. “Let's take a tour through my greatest hits. We can start with Lincoln--”

“Lincoln was fine apart from the breakup,” Jemma argues

“You mean the one where he actually moved to Florida to join the space program because he didn't want to run into me? And then before him, we had Miles the corporate sellout and before him we had Grant.”

“ _Grant._ ” Bobbi and Jemma say in unison. Jemma might actually shudder.

“Anyway, the point is that I can't be trusted when it comes to guys. I don't even know if he likes me,” Daisy added. “And I—what if I go for it and he turns out to be another mistake? What if I screw it up again?”

“What if you get it right?” Bobbi counters.

 

“So do you ever get a night off?” Robbie asks her the next time she sees him.

“Sometimes, if I'm good.” She tries very hard to ignore the pounding of her heart, which has apparently decided that now is the time to go rogue.

“And are there any bartenders around the area that you don't have mortal feuds with?” he says, wicked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Daisy knows that she shouldn't have told him about her longstanding rivalry with Raina Flowers, the bartender at Afterlife two blocks over. “Because I'd really like to buy you a drink. Maybe dinner, if you--”

She leans across the bar and kisses him hard, her hands digging into the fabric of his leather jacket and her mouth slanting across his. He kisses her back just as hard and when they finally break apart, they're both breathless. 

“So remember when you asked me what my thing was?” he says. “I think I've figured it out.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Robbie says and looks at her in a way that makes her consider the merits of abandoning her post for the rest of the night to kiss him again. “It's you.”


End file.
